print“We have created a Jewish and democratic nation, and we cannot let it turn into a nation of foreign workers,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a conference of the Israel Manufacturers Association in January. … Although the Israeli government issued a record 120,000 foreign work permits in 2009, the country’s political leaders say they want to phase out migrant labor. .. [that it] threatens the nation’s Jewish character” …
The New York Times has awoken to the story about “Netanyahu Wanting To Retain Israel’s National Character,” discussed on BAB in March.
Bibi’s is quite an extraordinary a position; it’s a paleoconservative position.
NYT: “Since the first intifada of the early 1990s, more than a million migrants from the developing world have come to Israel to replace the Palestinians, who were the country’s original source of cheap labor.”
Bibi thinks that unemployed, minimally skilled Israelis and Palestinians (provided they don’t smuggle bombs under their clothes) should do the jobs foreigners want so badly to do in Israel. Just as the same segment of American society should have dibs on those jobs in the US. While no one owns a job, and one cannot tell employers who to hire—people who care about the fabric of the society in which they live will want to see low-skilled locals making a living.
Israel is fortunate to have a better class of foreign laborers; these poor Chinese workers—some treated atrociously—do not march demanding political rights and calling their employers racists; they sue for the wages they’ve earned.
It seems that there is no more “American” national character.
Apparently, my younger nephew was unemployable in Israel by Israelis while they hired Arabs and imported foreigners for unskilled work. He eventually came over here at age 20, finished High School equivalency, then a B.S. and an on-line Masters in Accounting and works in NY with a wife and 3 kids. Israel’s loss and America’s gain.
Meir Kehane said that if one is to have JEWISH STATE, then you need Jewish trash collectors. The interesting question to ponder is: who is the “racist” – Kahane who would have Jews collect trash or those “liberal” types who insist that Arabs or Filipinos or Congolese are here on earth to collect their trash???
If one cannot tell an employer who to hire, then how does the NYT explain affirmitive action in the work place?